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That’s the finding of the sixth annual BrandZ Top 100 Most
Valuable Global Brands survey from brand marketing firm Millward
Brown, which calculates that Apple’s brand value has risen by 84
percent in the last year and is now worth $153.3 billion.
Compared to the company’s 2006 figures, Apple has increased its
brand value by 859 percent.

Following Apple among the top five brands are Google, IBM,
McDonald’s and Microsoft and rounding out the top 10 were
Coca-Cola, AT&T, Marlboro, China Mobile and GE, Millward
Brown said.

The company determines the brand’s value based on research,
including interviews with thousands of consumers, that determines
how much of a company’s value is based on brand alone and how
much on other factors.

“We look at cash flows of the business and then we ask how much
of that money comes from the associations that consumers have
with the brand and how much from other factors,” said Mario
Simon, managing director of Millward Brown Optimor, who called
the process a “collective consumer brain scan.”

“Every time [a consumer] chooses an
iPod over another MP3
player we look at how much of the time is it because of the brand
and how much is it because it looks cool or because it syncs with
iTunes,” Simon told BusinessNewsDaily.

Apple’s astronomic ascension in brand
value can be attributed to its unending focus on keeping its
customers happy, according to Simon.

“Since the beginning of their brand, Apple has known who they are
serving and has had a clear vision of who their customer is,”
Simon said. “They are thinking about how to make the life of that
customer better.

They are so good at focusing on that purpose of allowing people
to self-express through technology. It’s allowed them to make
tough decisions over time and carve out specific space for
themselves over time.”

Simon said businesses of all sizes can learn from Apple, which,
he pointed out, used to be a small business.

“All businesses can ask themselves how to add meaning to lives of
their customers,” he said. “Apple has done extremely well at
conveying it because they believe it. Any business can do that.”

Another brand that has figured out how to add meaning to its
customers’ lives is
Facebook, which, though it came in at only No. 35 in terms of
brand value, had the highest percentage brand growth this year
and appears for the first time in the Top 100. Amazon is the top
retail brand. And despite bad publicity and recalls, Toyota is
back at No. 1 in the car category; a testament to strong brands
and customer loyalty, the BrandZ survey found.

Google, which was No. 1 last year, was ranked in second place on
the overall Top 100 list with a brand value of $111.5 billion and
IBM was third with a value of $100.9 billion.